The best overviews are Krishan Kumar, Utopia and Anti-Utopia in Modern Times (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987); Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie P. Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1979); and Roland Schaer, Gregory Claeys, and Lyman Tower Sargent (eds.), Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World (New York: The New York Public Library/Oxford University Press, 2000).
The best overview of classical utopianism is John Ferguson, Utopias of the Classical World (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975).
There is very little on the Middle Ages, but see F. Graus, ‘Social Utopias in the Middle Ages’, tr. Bernard Standring, Past and Present, 38 (December 1967): 3–19; and Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium (London: Secker and Warburg, 1957).
The best books on the 16th and 17th centuries are J. C. Davis, Utopia and the Ideal Society: A Study of English Utopian Writing 1516–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); and Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Realistic Utopias: The Ideal Imaginary Societies of the Renaissance, 1516–1630 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982).
On National Socialist utopias, see Jost Hermand, Old Dreams of a New Reich: Volkish Utopias and National Socialism, tr. Paul Levesque in collaboration with Stefan Soldovieri (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992).
The closest there is to a general overview is Donald E. Pitzer (ed.), America’s Communal Utopias (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).
On the kibbutz, see Henry Near, The Kibbutz Movement: A History, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press/The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1992–7).
For contemporary eco-villages, see Jan Martin Bang, Ecovillages: A Practical Guide to Sustainable Communities (Edinburgh: Floris Books and Gabriola Island, BC, Canada: New Society Publishers, 2005); Barbro Grindheim and Declan Kennedy (eds.), Directory of Eco-Villages in Europe (Steyerberg: Global Eco-Village Network (GEN) Europe, 1998); and Barbara Knudsen (ed.), Eco-Villages and Communities in Australia and New Zealand (Maleny, Queensland: Global Eco-Village Network (GEN) Oceania/Asia, 2000).
On co-housing, see Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett, Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves, 2nd edn. with Ellen Hertzman (Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1994).
On therapeutic communities, see Association of Therapeutic Communities – <http://www.therapeuticcommunities.org> accessed 10 May 2010.
On the utopian socialists, see Keith Taylor, The Political Ideas of the Utopian Socialists (London: Frank Cass, 1982).
On settler utopianism, see James Belich, ‘Settler Utopianism?: English Ideologies of Emigration, 1815–1880, in Liberty, Authority, Formality: Political Ideas and Culture, 1600–1900, Essays in Honour of Colin Davis, ed. John Morrow and Jonathan Scott (Exeter: Imprint-Academic, 2008), 213–34; and Lyman Tower Sargent, ‘Colonial and Post-Colonial Utopias’, forthcoming in The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature, ed. Gregory Claeys (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
On utopianism in early America, see Lyman Tower Sargent, ‘Utopianism in Colonial America’, History of Political Thought, 4.3 (Winter 1983): 483–522.
On More’s influence in Spanish America, see Silvio Zavala, Sir Thomas More in New Spain: A Utopian Adventure of the Renaissance (London: The Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Councils, 1955).
On Bartolome de las Casas, see Victor N. Baptiste, Bartolome de las Casas and Thomas More’s ‘Utopia’: Connections and Similarities, A Translation and Study (Culver City, CA: Labyrinthos, 1990), which includes a translation of Memorial de Remedios para las Indias/Memorial of Remedies for the Indies.
On Vasco de Quiroga, see Fintan B. Warren, Vasco de Quiroga and His Pueblo-Hospitals of Santa Fe (Washington, DC: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1963).
On the Jesuit ‘reductions’, see Stelio Cro, ‘From More’s Utopia to the Jesuit Reducciones in Paraguay’, Moreana, 42.164 (December 2005): 92–117.
On the eijdos at their peak, see Henrik F. Infield and Koka Freier, People in Ejidos: A Visit to the Cooperative Farms of Mexico (New York: Praeger, 1954).
On garden cities, Robert Beevers, The Garden City Utopia: A Critical Biography of Ebenezer Howard (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1988); Stanley Buder, Visionaries and Planners: The Garden City Movement and the Modern Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Robert Freestone, Model Communities: The Garden City Movement in Australia (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson Australia, 1989); and Stephen V. Ward (ed.), The Garden City: Past, Present and Future (London: Spon, 1992).
The only overviews of the material in this chapter are a forthcoming essay by Jacqueline Dutton in The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature, ed. Gregory Claeys (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); and Zhang Longxi, ‘The Utopian Vision, East and West’, Utopian Studies, 13.1 (2002): 1–20 (revised in ‘The Utopian Vision, East and West’, Thinking Utopia: Steps into Other Worlds, ed. Jörn Ruüsen, Michael Fehr, and Thomas W. Rieger (New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), 207–29), which is primarily concerned with China.
On Chinese utopianism, see Wolfgang Bauer, China and the Search for Happiness: Recurring Themes in Four Thousand Years of Chinese Cultural History, tr. Michael Shaw (New York: Seabury Press, 1976); Koon-ki T. Ho, ‘Several Thousand Years in Search of Happiness: The Utopian Tradition in China’, Oriens Extremus (Germany), 30 (1983–6): 19–35; and Ho, ‘Utopianism: A Unique Theme in Western Literature? A Short Survey of Chinese Utopianism’, Tamkang Review, 13.1 (Autumn 1982): 87–108.
On the Gandhian utopia, see Richard G. Fox, Gandhian Utopia: Experiments with Culture (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1989).
While there are many specialist articles, there are few that discuss Christian utopianism generally.
On the millennium, see Kenelm Burridge, New Heaven, New Earth: A Study of Millenarian Activities (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969).
On heaven and hell, see Colleen McDannell and Bernhard Lang, Heaven: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988); and Alice K. Turner, The History of Hell (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1993).
On monasticism, see George A. Hillery, Jr, and Paula C. Morrow, ‘The Monastery as a Commune’, International Review of Modern Sociology, 6.1 (Spring 1976): 139–54 (reprinted as only by Hillery in Communes: Historical and Contemporary, ed. Ruth Shonle Cavan and Man Singh Das (New Delhi, India: Vikas Publishing House, 1979), 152–69).
On Jewish utopianism, see Michael Higger, The Jewish Utopia (Baltimore: The Lord Baltimore Press, 1932).
At the time of writing, there is no general study of the role utopianism plays in political theory.
The best introduction to ideology is Michael Freeden, Ideology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).